This was not going to be a challenge I was going to be active daily on. There have even been weeks or yes months where I did not even do anything at all. While I’m sure my results could have been better if I put more effort into them. I wanted to see how far the power of blockchain and starting from nothing could get you.

This by no means is a blueprint that the results I have acquired over the past 10 months can be repeated by doing the same thing. It was just what I attempted in trying to build up a bankroll and take some risks. While also leaving myself some skin in the game for different games that after a certain amount of time my assets could grow on their own hopefully in value.

It all started back when I wanted to play Alien Worlds on Wax. The issue was I did not have any Wax and it was not on any exchange that I was aware of back then that had both cryptocurrencies I could acquire to exchange for it and Wax itself. It is much easier than it is now day since it’s on our very own Hive-Engine.

The other issue was covering the cost for transacting on the Wax blockchain while not having anything to start with. While they don’t have anything like gas they do have CPU, Net, and Ram. This meant when I did not have enough CPU or Net I had to wait. It was all going to be game over when I ran out of Ram if I could not afford to buy more since that is what is used for storing information on wax and you don’t get it back.

While my new account at the time could perform actions on the Wax blockchain due to them staking a tiny amount of the needed resources to give it a try. For quite a while I felt like I was barely breaking even. Every time I needed to do something I was either running low on Ram and trying to save up to make sure that was not my end or I was waiting for the non-busy hours to get a few simple actions done.

Alien Worlds

To this day I still have not gotten any crazy luck on looting a crazy valued NFT. It has been quite a few months now since I’ve last seen a near-worthless NFT drop while mining in the game. While I still earn a little bit of Trilium (TLM) it’s nothing near like it was back in the day. This is why I sometimes just stop playing it a couple of times a day since I have not been getting drops in forever.

I however lucked early on and earned enough TLM to not only be able to upgrade my tools in that game but keep going in other games as well. To date, Alien Worlds due to my assets increasing in value over time has been my biggest success on Wax.

This success is not the same type of success that I’ve had to endure when playing other blockchain games. Sadly in a lot of games on blockchains like ETH, you would have been better off not buying anything and just holding the token instead. Nothing like feeling like your slaying in a game to realize your assets sell for less than the amount of crypto you spent on it despite the dollar amount tripling or more.

While not everything I bought or held from Alien Worlds so far is 100% profitable trade or buy. I have more than been lucky enough to have a couple of 4 cents to $1 buys turn into $15 or $100+ items. Other items I’ve been waiting for over half a year on that still don’t seem to have much use in the game. That is just how it goes in blockchain gaming sometimes.

What I have not seen a lot in other blockchains or games is where the game’s token like TLM was performing so while for a long time it would have been better just holding it instead of trying to invest into other assets or the main blockchains token like Wax itself.
Over time things play out and you just have to keep in mind opportunity cost and trying to diversify in a way within an ecosystem that you are always allowing yourself more opportunities for long-run success. This has not been without some of its current losses and even time wasted entirely.

Many Games Lack Opportunity

Out of all of them, I did try a couple of attempts to see if I could game the system. Waxtycoon comes to mind as one game I attempted to take a very long approach to. Due to CPU and Net costs from playing Waxtycoon, I ended up creating a secondary account and sending it some Wax to stake. Over the long run, Wax became such a “popular” blockchain that I stopped as I would barely have enough CPU to do 1 of 100’s or more transactions I need to do every few weeks or even months I checked in on my progress in that game. There was also never an opportunity to see a single cent of rewards.

Wax also had some interesting things going down on it. Due to why it was created some games migrated or created a Wax version of them on it. By then those game developers made many changes to their games from “mistakes” they made the first time around. Many of them also just clamped down on the ability of free or low investment accounts to get anywhere. Prospectors for instance I played on EOS. I stayed away from it on Wax since I know they made some changes I was not willing to grind through to get anywhere.

High Speculation

There were also games on Wax where the goal seemed more about generating assets you could stake in another game called R-Planet than what you were expecting out of the game itself. It was all quite a high-risk speculative nature and many were just creating massive milling farms trying to get all the Ether they could.

For me, this meant breeding the daylights out of these creatures in a game called Kolobok Adventures. Then run them on missions trying to get another item you could stake in R-Planet. Those items only had any value due to R-Planet. Once R-Planet pulled or nerfed the daylights out of staking rewards in favor of their own game or newer games that crashed things quite hard. On top of that Kolobok Adventures made a lot of changes to their game to slow down or stop people from doing what I was doing.

One of the greater things for a while on Wax was if you took a risk and it failed you just maybe could try and recover your losses in some way from staking on R-Planet if you had NFTs that they accepted.

I’m at a point now where I’m not generating much Ether and that stuff is near worthless the last time I looked prices up. Even crazier with how much the Wax blockchain has grown I don’t even consider it worth unstacking items due to the blockchain costs and trying to sell most of the stuff I have staked there.

Flipping

I realized in Kogs for a while you could open up packs and sell the top 1 or 2 drops you got and break-even or profit enough times that it made up when you didn’t. This however got boring quite quickly after a few days. I also did not want to get greedy and be stuck with a bunch of “higher valued” Kogs that were not having quick enough turnover on.

After a couple of days, I had enough Kogs I was waiting to sell that I held off on buying more. I had set a hard limit on how much Wax I was willing to risk at any time in Kogs. A market equilibrium was finally found where this was not worth doing anymore. While I have more than recovered my costs it’s now been 3 months since my last Kog sale. This is why it’s best to never get too greedy. You never know when things will stop being in your favor.

A game like Kogs also plays into my longer-term approach to a few games out there. I want enough profit-taking to be occurring that I can keep taking risks, losses, and planting myself lots and lots of seeds. While I might sell-off on some higher valued items to keep the momentum going. In a few years items, you can no longer get in drops could be worth a nice price. A four-cent item becoming worth $20 in 6+ months while not common is also not unheard of either and I’ve seen that happened in quite a few games.

Generally, I don’t consider myself someone who wants to or enjoys flipping packs or items. I prefer to play a game, earn assets from that game and sell off what I don’t have a current need for it I’m not holding. I’m sure I could have made a lot more if this section was my main focus as markets do lose their minds when it comes to reasonable pricing of items.

Final Thoughts

This by no means is financial advice. Things that might have worked for me 6 months or longer ago may no longer be worth trying out. For the most part, I play things for enjoyment, and walking away with a profit is just added fun.

Far too many people jump into what is currently trendy and overpriced hoping to make a quick buck before jumping ship and getting into something else. This space is quite young and many games will take years of holding before people get to see the real fruits of their time spent.

While it would have been easier to have started with a few hundred bucks at the start of this that was not the point either. Blockchain presents lots of opportunities out there to start with next to nothing and build it into something. That however requires time, knowledge, and perseverance. Like showing up once in a while to make a blog post. Many say or think they will and never do.

Many of the early-day opportunities I got to enjoy for months on end are no longer around. This is also something I’m not looking to consume every waking min over either as it's not at a point where it’s generating enough to cover investing a larger share of my time into.

My next goal since I still have some liquidity to play around with and midterm holding assets I would not mind selling is growing to $10k in assets. This could take months, years, or never at all. Next week everything could be worth $0 and that could be the end of it as well.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar.